Balance Bikes and Training Wheels: A Short Lesson in Teaching
I was about six when I learned to ride a real bike. Before that I had hobbled around the driveway on a bike outfitted with training wheels, slowly chasing my older brother.
Everything went exactly like you would expect. My dad and I went to a large, empty parking lot. My dad took off the training wheels. I was scared. He held on to the back of the seat as I slowly pedaled, and told me he wouldn’t let go. I was still scared. I started speeding up. He thought I was getting the hang of it. So he let go. Afraid that he had let go, I looked back after successfully biking my first several feet, and then promptly lost control of the bike.
Today, when I go to the park with my son, there are three- and four-year-olds zooming around — fearless — faster than I could ever go on my bike with training wheels. They’re on balance bikes: small bikes without pedals and without training wheels. The seat is low enough to the ground that the rider’s feet can touch the ground and high enough that, when the rider pulls up his feet, the bike coasts along just like a real bike.
There’s an important lesson here in how we structure learning experiences.
Sometimes, it seems like we give students lots of practice at something, but then, when we ask them to actually perform the skill — to bike…
